Fallout- A Nuclear Wasteland Tale
by Megaman12345600
Summary: The story of a Vault Dweller in a world unlike anything he'd ever experienced. So basically, like Fallout. Rated M for future content, as well as references to mature subjects.
1. Prologue: The History of Fallout

If I was going to start my story as a whimsical tale of heroics and fantasy, I'd probably start with some cliché like "the sun was shining on a beautiful day". This is reality, however, and I would probably need to give more information. First off, there are no sunny days. Not anymore. From what we heard, the sun used to shine all the time onto the face of the earth. A pity, as I and many others lived sealed underground. To give a little context, I'll have to start from the beginning. The beginning of this life began in 2077, when the Great War started and ended on the same day. The Great War had been predicted for a while, possibly since 2050, when the world's supply of fossil fuels ran out. The Resource Wars ravaged the landscapes that had what few fuels remained. No one knows who fired the first nuke. China, the USSR and America, as well as all other nuclear capable countries fired upon the world, ravaging the landscape. This resulted in a disastrous consequence; the total elimination of the human race, with mere hundreds surviving underground in metal facilities called Vaults. A few hundred per vault, with barely over 100 placed in strategically placed points in America, and possibly the rest of the world. Each vault had the capability of holding 10,000 people, though it was rarely needed. After the nukes hit, billions were wiped out, either killed or mutated into other creatures, living in immense torment for the rest of their lives.

The creatures, by the way, are varied. Depending on how much radiation they had received, they would be affected in different ways. The most common mutations are ghouls. Not ghouls like in the old horror novels, but humanoid creatures, half decayed. Some people would confuse them with zombies, but they were capable of speech, thought and usually retained most of their knowledge from their life before being a ghoul. No, the real zombies are the Feral Ghouls, the next level of mutation and quite possibly one of the scariest things to have running at you in a pack. Any ghouls still capable of thought are regarded as lucky, as it only requires a small amount of extra radiation to make the difference between a ghoul and a Feral Ghoul. If a human receives an even larger amount of radiation, they may become a Glowing One. These unique ghouls BLEED radiation, infecting everywhere they go. It is most commonly thought that no Glowing Ones possess the ability to speak, but no one knows for sure. Since the only way to stop them spreading radiation everywhere is to kill them, people usually shoot first and ask questions later. It is strange that people don't try to find out if it is possible for them to speak, as cures for radiation poisoning does exist. Though it doesn't surprise me. Bigotry has existed for hundreds of years. Why would a nuclear apocalypse change that? Hell, most ghouls themselves are unfairly linked to Feral Ghouls by humans. This ends with the ghouls treated as something different to a human. Poor bastards. But I can't spend my time pitying ghouls. Some ghouls are pure evil incarnate, doing tasks for their own nefarious end. But this isn't how I should start. If I am to explain my tale, and the hardships I experienced in an alien world unlike what I had known for most of my life, I should explain Pip-Boys.

A Pip-Boy is made by RobCo (Vault Tec, the creators of the vaults, partnered with them. Everyone inside a vault got one) and is basically a PDA built into a wrist strap and packed with awesome. As well as being able to send and receive messages, interface with technology and listen to the radio, it also has a Geiger counter and a Biometric lock (in case you are unaware, a biometric lock is a lock that can only be opened by the person the Pip-Boy belongs to and any INCREDIBLY skilled hackers). In addition to this, a wire connecting to the user's body through a small robotic implant on the forearm allows the Pip-Boy to see the user's health, and any ailments currently affecting them. Sometimes I wonder if RobCo knew. They unwittingly gave multiple things that would allow people to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Though to be fair, so did Vault-Tec, and they were just making assumptions. Nonetheless, both RobCo and Vault-Tec have saved my life now, so I guess I owe them that. I can't feel as if they should have done something. After all, they only focused on making what people would need if there was a nuclear apocalypse. I'm sure they had the best intentions at heart.

Nonetheless, I'm getting carried away. My story began in one of these vaults, over one hundred years after the beginning. Specifically, it started in a cell.


	2. Chapter One: Incarceration

Chapter One: Incarceration

It's easy to doubt. People doubted I would continue to be a troublemaker. I proved them wrong. I doubted I'd get caught. The security officers proved me wrong. I stared at the stone walls, their shape and structure familiar to me. Why had I started this? Truth be told, I wasn't all that bad. I only did a few bad things now and again, and only for attention. I have no problem admitting this. Let's be honest, most of what I did was just for attention. Having parents who were later taken away for being insane can affect a person, and the fact that I then had no role models to look up to meant that I usually wouldn't know what was right. But seeing the attention that I got when I did something wrong made me crave more. This meant that I was usually an outcast. Sighing, I looked at the bare, rugged stone walls (which was NOT normal vault design, I might add). The sad truth of it was, I felt alone. No one felt the same way I did about leaving. When I discussed leaving with others, no one agreed. The vault was safe. The vault was home. The vault was a shit place to live your life. Some pre-war technologies were put into the vaults, including something called "DVDs". These contained recordings, usually in the form of a fictional tale akin to books and the occasional play the vault citizens put on. A specific DVD hit close to home when I was younger, a recording called "Alien". The claustrophobic corridors of the spaceship in Alien reminded me of the vault so much that I could barely sleep; fearing the creature from that movie would find and kill me. I wasn't the only one, either. Loads of people were scared shitless by that recording, fearing air vents and darkened hallways. Though I have to admit, the illusion of the recording was broken when I re-watched it at an older age and saw that they had used the same corridor from different angles to give the illusion of multiple corridors existing. I was at first surprised when I discovered this, but then realised that similar corridors were nothing new to me. All of the vault's corridors were practically identical. How would I tell the difference?

"This place needs redecoration." I said to myself.

"Then maybe you should focus your efforts on that instead of causing trouble." I turned around in my chair, and saw the Overseer, a burly man in his forties. For someone who was actually quite young, he had greying hair and wrinkles on his skin. This man was a dictator, emphasis on the "dick". Ever since his rise to power, my life, as had many other people's lives, had been made a living hell. He became overseer simply because his father was the overseer. And his son will become the next overseer with an even more vicious grip on the vault dwellers. It seemed that every overseer was worse than the last, each being raised to be as bad as their predecessor. They refused to free us, for whatever reason. Supposedly the outside world was dangerous. No one knows for sure, and when looking through vault schematics (each vault had a copy. This copy was bundled with the "Vault Technician Handbook", a book used by the people who do repairs on the internal workings of the vault), I found that there isn't a way to see the surface from down in the vault. No technology was made that could do this, though I daresay we could now. I didn't know the Overseer's real name. Not many did. Nor did I have much interest. He was the one who said my parents had to be locked up. I hated him. Though right now, I didn't really see a point in expressing these feelings.

"If I wanted to do something useful for the vault, then I wouldn't be here in the first place, would I?" I looked at the Overseer, trying to see if he was trying to change me. His expression was blank, a lack of emotions on his features. It was almost as if he was a robot, trying to analyse me to see how I felt. Well I wasn't going to let him.

"Perhaps if you would explain why you do not like the vault, I would be able to help you. Right now, all I can do is make assumptions. From what I can tell, you're bitter about your parents. Maybe if you..."

"It's not about my parents, dumbass! It's this stupid vault! All my life, my parents have told me that the vaults were meant to open after the war. Even if that isn't true, do we not have the supplies to get out? The war can't have been going for 100 years. Hell, with what the world apparently had, it shouldn't have gone for longer than a year! If your head had been filled with lies about escape, then maybe YOU would act like I do." The Overseer was quiet. My outburst had come from nowhere, and wasn't a usual occurrence. I usually kept to myself if I could, bottling my emotions until I was alone. He had no right to mention my parents. It was that bastard that locked them up. It was insane to talk about leaving the vault. I had woken up and discovered that they had been locked up, and that I was forbidden to see them. Of course I missed my parents. Anyone without them would. The stories they told me of the land outside the vault mystified me. Sure, they may have just said these things to placate me, trying to get me to stop talking about how much the overseer was a dick. Not like it wasn't true, though. He was silent for a long time, and I saw him trying to make a decision. There was something he wanted to do, but at the same time, didn't. This worried me. Was he going to reunite me with my parents in the worst way? Just when my mind started trying to formulate a plan of escape, he spoke.

"There's something I have to tell you. About your parents."

The walk to the Overseer's office was the longest walk I've ever had. What did he have to tell me? Had my parents left me and went somewhere else in the vault? There are still places I haven't been in here. Were they there this whole time? Or was it something worse? Were they dead? Something had kept my rebellion going, and I was almost sure that it was the thought that my parents were still alive. To find out that they were dead now… I'd probably break down on the spot. And that was NOT something I wanted the Overseer to see. When we had finally arrived at the office, I was panicking. What was I about to find out? The door slid open, a fancy splitting panel instead of one just going into the ceiling. I never understood the logic behind this. Why have doors that can't open in a power outage? It seemed stupid; yet another problem I had with the vaults. The room was not as I expected. Since the overseers were the leaders of the vaults, I expected a lush room, a polished wooden desk with a large leather armchair. Truth be told, it just looked like a normal room, with a terminal on a standard desk. Multiple bookshelves were present, a sign that it wasn't just a normal room. The bookshelves contained all of the fictional works in the vault, in the form of DVDs and books. Another bookshelf had DVD-like boxes, but without any printed images on the box to signify what it was. One of the boxes was facing me, and I saw that it had been titled in a black marker on the front. It was called "Security footage: April 2280". This was surprising to me, as there had been no mention of security cameras in the vault in anything I read about them. I don't know why it surprised me as much as it did. The overseers obviously had to know everything. It explained how the overseers had known that my parents were against the vault. I quickly threw that thought out of my mind. I still didn't know what had happened, and I didn't want to feel sorry for them if they had abandoned me. This train of thought reminded me of why I was here, and I turned to the Overseer.

"Why am I here?" I asked him.

"You're here because this is one of the few places I could bring you to without arousing suspicion. There aren't any cameras in here." This sentence made chills run down my spine. Was he finally done with me? Was he about to kill me?

"You said there was something you needed to tell me about my parents, so spit it out already." I was going to see his reaction. If it seemed he was going to try to kill me, I would fight back.

"There IS something I need to tell you, but I can't just tell you. I doubt you'd believe me. Luckily for me, I can access security footage and show you." With this, he walked over to the terminal at the desk and started typing furiously. "This is something that I originally tried to delete, or at least make damn near impossible to get to. This may take a few minutes." He seemed unlike himself in front of the computer, opening files and changing them in seconds. Every so often, he would reveal a new folder, even more encrypted than the last. He would then go through that, delving deeper into the rabbit hole of folders. After a short time, he finally reached a file. He opened this file, launching the program that we had all used before to watch DVDs. I was stunned. I had never seen a recording that wasn't on a DVD, and I found myself unable to focus properly. This was technology I had never seen before. The Overseer noticed, and snapped his finger in front of my face. "Focus, Mark. This is important." Remembering what he had said, I looked at the screen. It showed the vault door, something I had only seen in books. The date and time was in the corner, and I immediately recognised the date. This was the night my parents… disappeared. I was at first confused as to why the Overseer had chosen to show me a still image of the vault door, but that feeling of confusion was quelled as I heard commotion play over the computer's speakers.

"After them!" I heard someone off-screen say. My heart skipped a beat as I saw my parents run onto the screen. My mother was wearing a white tank-top and blue trousers instead of the usual vault jumpsuit, something that confused me. My father wore his vault-technician jumpsuit, and I immediately knew why as he started opening up a panel on the wall with a tool I couldn't see. As he took off the last constraint holding the panel in place, the- younger- Overseer and security guards burst through the door.

"Going somewhere?" He said to them, a gun in his hand. Few guns were in the vaults, and it didn't surprise me that the overseers had one.

"We're leaving, Jim. You're not restricting us anymore." my father said to him. He moved his hand from the wall, the panel dropping. A yellow lever lay behind it, with wires coming off the base. He pulled it. The huge vault door started slowly moving to the side, opening the way to freedom (!).

"You know I can't let you leave. Your ancestors sealed your fate. Vault Tec told the line of overseers to keep all of the citizens in here. You try and leave, and I will shoot you. You know your wife won't leave without you. Tell me, what would your son think?" The Overseer's words were murderously calm, and I could hear the venom in his voice. He didn't want to be the one who failed. Out of all the overseers, he would be the first to tell his descendant that he couldn't do his job. To avoid that risk, he was willing to kill.

"Jim. You know as much as I do that freedom means more than risk to me. If you kill me, I'll be free of the vault. Either way, I will never see this place again. So if you want to stop me, you're going to have to shoot me." My father's words were also calm, but unlike the Overseer's, his voice actually calmed me. "And if you lay one finger on my son, I will take you to Hell with me." The Overseer contemplated something, his gun pointed at my father.

"Well, better not take that risk." He said, and shot.

If my father had been stood a centimetre to the right, he would have been shot in the neck. As it was, the bullet coursed through his upper shoulder, flying straight into the box containing the lever, taking bone fragments and blood with it. He gripped his arm with pain, and I looked in horror as the vault door began to close, the power supply broken. My mother punched a guard, took the baton from his hand, and swung it into the face of the Overseer. He collapsed, unconscious. She then threw the baton into the face of the last guard, and he crumpled too. She ran over to my father, who had red covering his forearm. His teeth were grit with pain, a line of sweat covering his brow.

"Are you okay?" she asked, the first thing I had heard her say. He nodded. "We need to get out of here. We've not got long." The two ran through the door right before it slammed shut, cutting them off from any return.

The file had stopped playing. I looked at the Overseer, now older than he was back then. He had sealed us all in for good, whether he had intended to or not. In retrospect, I now knew why he wanted to tell me now. I had never mentioned my parents to him, nor how the vault was a bad place, so he had always thought that, somehow, I knew. Like my parents had told me. When he found out that I had assumed that they were still in the vault, he knew to set me straight. In retrospect, he was doing the right thing, or at least what the creators of the vault- practically gods- told his family to do. He was doing the right thing, and my parents were the bad guys. No. I couldn't think that way. It wasn't right. My parents had fought for freedom against a repressive dictatorship. Unfortunately, we hadn't realised the true enemy wasn't the overseers- who were merely pawns- but the creators themselves, Vault Tec. Still, they were long dead. The Overseer should have tried to organise a breakthrough. Then again, they still needed to make the safety of the vault citizens their priority. But the Overseer had seen my parents leave! All these thoughts flowed through my head as I tried to comprehend a way that the best possible solution could have happened.

I couldn't.

Why couldn't I?

Maybe I would make a better overseer.

That is, if I wasn't going to leave the vault at the first opportunity I got.

It's possible that the Overseer didn't see his mistake. It's also possible that he did this on purpose, to either get rid of me or to let me be free. Either way, it didn't matter. I was leaving the vault before the lights came on to signal the next morning. No matter how difficult it was.

It actually wasn't as hard as I expected. I had a BB gun since a young age, and I'd caused mischief with it almost every day since. A real gun would be easy. I asked the Overseer questions, trying to find out as much of his personality as possible, as well as ask about my parents. I found that he is overprotective, and that anything valuable will be kept in a safe somewhere known only to him. Plus, he kept the key on him at all times. The key wasn't going to be an issue; I'd found bobby-pins just lying around on the floor, and combining it with a small screwdriver that had belonged to my father, I had practiced lockpicking for a while. The rudimentary safe wouldn't be able to withhold its secrets from me. I managed to sneak into the Overseer's office when he had left for the night. The safe was hidden behind a framed family tree, and was actually much larger than I thought. Placing the bent pin and my screwdriver into the lock, I started whittling away at the defences. I was nervous. If I didn't get away with this, I'd be dead, and I would never see my parents again. The lock was actually much harder than I anticipated, and I had to resist the urge to leave now, before having opened it. I was shaking so much that I hadn't realised that I'd unlocked it until it started swinging open.

He'd upgraded.

Inside was the most kickass rifle I'd ever seen. From what I knew about guns (which wasn't much), I could see that it was worth a fair bit. Had he made this?

Why?

What could be so dangerous that he'd need a gun as powerful as this? I took the gun, and strapped it onto my back.

Also inside the vault was a leather-bound book and a key-card. The only place I'd seen a key-card reader was on his computer, so I took the card and inserted it into the computer. When the computer booted up, I was shown a list of different command choices, including 'UNLOCK SAFE'. Well, that was a huge help. I flicked through the options given to me, and found nothing of interest except for a command labelled 'UNLOCK OVERSEER ACCESS TUNNEL'. I activated that command, and was shocked to see the floor behind the terminal open up, revealing a set of stairs leading down. Deactivating the computer, I pocketed the key-card and walked down the stairs.

The bottom of the stairs held a corridor leading into blackness, and for a moment, I wasn't sure whether or not it was the best idea. Memories of 'Alien' played through my mind as I travelled into the darkness. After a few moments of walking, the sound of the floor closing up echoed through the hall, and the light behind me that I was using to coordinate my direction disappeared. There was no turning back now, and I kept walking forward. A few more moments of walking blessed me with lights above turning on, and I could now see my surroundings. The hallway's walls and floor were pure white, the light shining off them and practically blinding me. The entire scene unfolded in front of me suggested that the corridor had been used very little, if at all. The walls were clean, as if someone was down here regularly. But the impossibility of this told me this wasn't the reason it was so clean. Not far ahead, a door was at the end of the corridor, with a large lever that would require a lot of strength to be pulled on the door. When I did attempt to pull it, the lever gave surprisingly little resistance, and I nearly fell over after having exerted too much effort to pull it, making myself feel like a damn fool. I was just happy no one had seen me. The door took more effort to push open, but still didn't require much. It surprised me, as the door seemed purposed to keep things secure, and it seemed to be counter-intuitive. Much like the vault itself, I suppose. That was supposed to keep people safe after the war, but all it did was imprison people. I realised now how much I wanted to escape from this hellish place. I pushed open the door all the way, revealing the other side of the door fully.

It was the Vault Door!

I couldn't believe my luck. A stroke of curiosity had led to a lucky break, taking me straight under the guards and right to the door.

But I couldn't be careless yet. The Overseer was bound to have a way to know when the computer had been activated last, and I still needed to repair the door opening mechanism. Getting my screwdriver, I went over to where I had seen the box when watching the camera. The panel had not been replaced, and I could see blood on the cables and on the floor, from when my father had been shot.

I was lucky.

The cables had barely been broken, only small gaps between two wires. By stretching them, I might have just been able to reconnect them and fix the break. I didn't want to risk this, however. Luckily, I had prepared for the worst, and brought spare cable. Attaching the cable as best as I could, I reconnected both wires and reactivated the door controls. Preparing myself for the worst, I pulled the lever.

It opened! The door swung open, revealing what I had been unable to see from the footage I had watched of the past. Beyond the door lay a long, cavernous passage, from which I could see a faint glow coming from the distance. Not knowing what I was about to see, I took the rifle from off my back, and walked into the passage.

_To Be Continued._

**LEVEL UP: #1. PERK(S) OBTAINED.**

**Daddy's Boy: ****_Just like dear old Dad, you've devoted your time to intellectual pursuits. You gain an additional 5 points to both the Science and Medicine skills._**

**Gun Nut: ****_You are obsessed with using and maintaining a wide variety of conventional firearms. With each rank of the Gun Nut perk, you gain an additional 5 points to the Small Guns and Repair skills._**

**Lady Killer: ****_In combat, you do +10% damage against female opponents. Outside of combat, you'll sometimes have access to unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex._**


End file.
